Found (20 page)

I turned and walked backward to see what she was doing. I wondered if she’d known Connwaer.

“I have got my eye on you, thief,” she said, but she gave a half smile.

She had, then. I turned back. She was probably watching to see if I got into trouble.

The Duchess Rowan arrived at a double door and waited for me to catch up, then threw it open.

“See?” she said, going in.

I followed her. The room was very fine, a study with a polished wooden table, a patterned red rug on the floor, and lots of shelves stuffed with books. It opened to another room, a bedroom, and
a library, and a dressing room.

“These are the rooms of the duchess’s magister,” Rowan said. She gave me a sharp, sideways glance. “That’s you, Conn, once you remember that you can do magic.”

Nevery shot her an angry glare, but she just raised her eyebrows and looked duchess-ish.

Nevery took me back to Heartsease.

After dinner, he went to Magisters Hall for a meeting, and I went up to the study to read another grimoire. Benet brought tea and then went away again.

I stared into the fire while the tea got cold in my cup.

It was warm here, and I got plenty to eat, and the books were interesting, but I didn’t belong in this place. They all wanted me to be Connwaer, to be a wizard and the duchess’s magister, and to eat biscuits. Every time the wizard Nevery looked at me, he was wanting to see Connwaer. It made
them all sad that I wasn’t him.

Maybe tomorrow I’d go into the Twilight and find a hiding place. I was good at melting into shadows. They wouldn’t be able to find me, and after a while they’d stop looking.

I heard a
scrtch-scrtch
at the window.

I went over and opened it, and the tiny dragon, along with a puff of freezing air, hopped in, settling on the windowsill. I closed the window, the latch cold under my fingers.

“Hello, dragon,” I said.

It crouched on the sill and wrapped its tail around itself. A line of gray smoke trickled from one of its nostrils.

I went back to the table, to the grimoire I’d been reading. The dragon stayed on the windowsill.

The spell written on the page was a long one. The annotation said it was a spell for protecting a house from burglars.

The dragon language flowed across the page. And then I came across a word that I knew.

Tallennar.

I’d heard it before, hadn’t I?

“Tallennar,” I said aloud.

On the windowsill, the tiny dragon cocked its head and fixed me with a bright red eye. Then it twitched its tail. With a rustle of its greeny-gold wings, it hop-flew from the window to the table, landing with a scrabble of claws.

It crouched at the edge of the table, watching me.

Slowly, carefully, I reached out, and the dragon closed its eyes, leaned toward me, and let me lay my hand on its back, between its wings. Its scales felt warm and silver-smooth under my fingers.

Pip
, the little dragon said.

My hand on its back grew warmer, and then a sudden flash of magic burst from the dragon and flowed over me, wrapping me in sparks and flame flowing with memories like banners in the wind, glimpses of places, people, the sharp smell of pyrotechnic smoke, birds with black feathers, a chophouse in the Twilight, Rowan swinging a sword, the old
Heartsease with the bite out of the middle, Benet, Nevery, everything.

Slowly the sparks faded. I sat back in my chair, blinking the brights from my eyes, and caught my breath. Pip squirmed out from under my hand and crept to the other end of the table.

I remembered where I’d heard the spellword before. I closed my eyes and saw the dazzling blue sky overhead, and breathed in the thin, cold mountain air. I held Pip in the canvas knapsack. I felt the cave doorstep tremble under my feet as the word rumbled up through the rock.

The cave dragon might’ve been talking to me, Connwaer, when it said the word. I opened my eyes. “But it might’ve been talking to you, Pip,” I said.

The little dragon twitched its tail. It crouched lower on the tabletop. For a moment I thought it was going to fly away. Then it edged closer. I stayed very still, holding my breath. Using its claws, Pip climbed up my arm and perched on my shoulder, clinging tightly to my sweater, and wrapped its tail
around my neck like a scarf.

Maybe the cave dragon had been talking to both of us when it’d said the word.

Tallennar
.

I knew what it meant. It meant
thief
.

Well, that was all right. Because a thief really was a lot like a wizard.

ARGENT
—A noble young man with a sense of honor but no liking for former thieves and gutterboys. He is an expert swordcrafter.

BENET
—A rather scary-looking guy but one who loves to knit, bake, and clean. His nose has been broken so many times, it’s been flattened. If he were an animal he’d be a big bear. His hair is brown and sticks out on his head like spikes. You wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, but you would want to eat his biscuits.

CONNWAER
—Has shaggy black hair that hangs down over his bright blue eyes. He’s been a gutterboy for most of his life, so he’s watchful and a little wary; at the same time, he’s completely pragmatic and truthful. He’s thin, but he’s sturdy and strong, too. He has a quirky smile (hence his quirked tail as a cat). Conn does not know his own age; it could be anywhere from twelve to fourteen. A great friend to have, but be careful that you don’t have anything valuable in your pockets in reach of his sticky fingers.

THE DUCHESS
—Willa Forestal, the duchess, rules the wealthier part of Wellmet, the Sunrise, from the Dawn Palace. Rowan is her daughter. The duchess doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, even less now that she’s been attacked and wounded by the Shadows. The wound is still troubling her; it’s slowly turning her to stone. Fortunately, she is highly intelligent and foresighted and has trained her daughter well to take over as duchess if necessary.

EMBRE
—A young man about eighteen years old. He is very thin and has a sharp face with dark eyes and black hair, and he might have smudges on his hands and face from working with blackpowder. Everything about him is sharp, including his intellect.

KERRN
—The captain of the Dawn Palace guards, Kerrn is tall and athletic; she wears her blond hair in a braid that hangs down her back and has sharp, ice-blue eyes. She is an expert swordfighter. She speaks with a strong accent because she comes from Helva, far away from the Peninsular Duchies.

NEVERY FLINGLAS
—Is tall with gray hair, a long gray beard, shaggy gray eyebrows, and sharp black eyes. He’s impatient and grumpy and often hasty, but beneath that his heart is kind (he would never admit it). Mysterious and possibly dangerous, Nevery is a difficult wizard to read but a good one to know.

NIMBLE
—A magister and rather weak wizard, Nimble was a colleague of Pettivox but was cleared of any wrongdoing after the destruction of the Underlord’s device. He looks like a bat and is a pen-pushing, officious man. He dislikes Conn very much.

PIP
—As Conn says, Pip is an “it,” not a “he.” Pip is a small dragon, no bigger than a kitten, but it has a very big attitude. Pip does not trust Conn at first—and why should it? Conn stole it from its cave in the mountains, after all. Still, one thief should be friends with another….

ROWAN FORESTAL
—A tall, slender girl of around sixteen, with red hair and gray eyes. She is very intelligent with a good, if dry, sense of humor. She is the daughter of the Duchess of Wellmet. She is also very interested in studying swordcraft.